Criminalizing homeless people does not help

Everyone knows you don’t kick someone when they’re down, but that’s what’s happening in Marin’s unhoused community (“Novato police probe tent slashings at homeless camp,” Jan. 6).

In Novato, it appears that homeless folk have been terrorized. What could make someone hate the unhoused so deeply that they destroy their only shelter? What a primitive response.

How does this help the victims get back on their feet and off the streets?

When psychiatric institutions closed and the patients were promised community support that never materialized, we started seeing people sleeping in doorways. Apparently, this offended our sensibilities. Homelessness became criminalized, making it a law enforcement problem instead of the social and economic issue it is. Administrations — both Republican and Democrat — slashed budgets for the fragile social safety net we once had, diminishing services for those on the margins.

Americans have always believed in the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” Puritan ethic that served the colonialists when we took the country from the natives. The poor are considered “lazy” and should “just work harder.” Bosses are encouraged to get people to work for free. Profit is king.

People that don’t work don’t create profit. Slaves worked for free, creating enormous profit. Those not engaged in some form of profit-generating activity are hated.

Many of us live paycheck to paycheck, knowing that one illness could put us on the streets too. We’re afraid it will happen to us.

Fear breeds hatred. Those not playing the capitalist game by the rules are scorned.

This sadistic treatment of the unhoused has to stop. It must be denounced loudly and firmly by us all. We like to think we’re better than this. Are we?

— Meg Brizzolara, Novato